Green Lantern's Blight!
by Bakkughan
Summary: A guy wakes up in the middle of nowhere, with no idea where he is, when he is, or how he got there. All he knows is that he suddenly woke up in outer space... wearing a Green Lantern Power Ring... so, now what?
1. Chapter 1

_**Green Lantern's Blight!**_

* * *

**Time: Unkown**

** Place: Unkown**

* * *

For those first few moments, waking up is always just slightly disorienting. At least, it always has been for me. Sometimes, the duration of the disorientation lasts somewhat longer than usual, for a variety of factors.

For some people, this is because of the amount of alcohol they had consumed the night before.

For others, it was because they were (un)lucky enough to not have slept in their own beds.

In my case, it was because I woke up in outer space.

Now, usually, I'm not one for dramatic outbursts. Still though, when I woke up expecting to see my cozy room, and was instead greeted with the vast nothingness of the void surrounding me on all sides with an infinite darkness as far as the eye could see…

Let's just say that in that moment, I was rather grateful that in Space, nobody can hear you scream.

Since there was no ground beneath my feet (or a sky above my head) I had that jarring sensation of falling that you sometimes feel in your dreams, a full body electric shock, while your stomach is roughhousing with your liver inside your esophagus.

Except of course, this being the infinite stretching darkness of the void, the feeling _didn't stop_.

It was only after several _long_ minutes of falling down (or up. Or sideways. Or diagonally. 'cause _space_) that I started to get a hold of myself. I stretched myself out spread-eagle, closed my eyes and desperately _willed_ the spinning to stop.

Surprisingly enough, I did in fact get the sensation of coming to a stop. Which was odd: since there were no landmarks within several lightyears of me, there had been no way to tell whether or not I had been moving at all up until now.

I could've been hurtling faster than a space-shuttle, or simply hanging static in space, or spinning like a top, and due to the sheer _vastness_ of the universe, they all would've appeared the same to me.

Now though, I definitely got the sense that I was anchored in space. I still couldn't tell up from down, but at the very least I had stopped falling and/or spinning.

Tentatively I opened my eyes, wary to find out just what the hell happened to me (and also what the hell was going on in general). For all I knew, I was caught in a tractor beam of a ship, and aliens were readying their sporks even now in anticipation of a nice Terran dinner.

Main course: me.

However, when I opened my eyes, I didn't see an alien ship.

What I _did_ see was somehow both infinitely better, and far _far_ worse.

A green glow surrounded me, and on my right index finger sat a massive green ring.

_Fuck me_.

"But!" I can hear you ask, "isn't being a Green Lantern balls-to-the-walls awesometacular!?"

And, up to a certain point, you would be right, my imaginary friend! There was a reason Green Lantern rings were sometimes called some of the most powerful weapons in the universe.

Granted, a large part of that reason was the propaganda and inflated ego of the Guardians of Oa, but there was _some_ merit to their boast. _Theoretically_, the Lantern was capable of nearly anything, it's only limits the user's imagination and willpower, and the ring's energy levels.

Given that the Lanterns were carefully selected and rigorously trained, and the ring was supplied by a literal lantern which in turn was supplied by a Central Power Battery which in turn was supplied by an _infinite_ energy source, and the idea of a piece of jewelry being a weapon advanced enough to oversee entire _sectors_ of space becomes a lot easier to accept.

The problem with all this was this was pure _theoretical_. In practice, wielding a Ring meant throwing around your opponents with mega-sized boxing gloves and fighting with hard-light swords and machine gun turrets (at least on Earth it did).

Green Lantern Rings were powerful, that cannot be denied. _Green Lanterns_ on the other hand, had the unfortunate fate of being stuck in an odd place on the power scaling of the DC Universe.

They were policing organics which couldn't stand up against the technology of Oa, while constantly being threatened by groups and individuals that were capable of thinning their numbers with ease.

The Five Inversions, The Antimatter Dimension with its Weaponers of Qward and the Anti-Monitor, Sinestro and his corps, Atrocitus and _his_ corps, Parallax, Ranx the Sentient City, Nekron and his Black Hand, Krona, the Manhunters, these were just _some_ of the Green Lantern Corps' most feared enemies.

Many of them were created by the Guardians' mistakes in the first place.

Green Lanterns fell in that same category that the likes of Aquaman did: too powerful to be really threatened by ordinary beings with ordinary means, but woefully outclassed by the _real_ shakers and movers in the galaxy. Meaning that whenever shit went down, they were left punching above their weightclass.

And the Green Lantern Corps had to deal with that a worryingly large number of times.

Even worse was that for many of said shakers and movers, wearing a Green Lantern Ring was sufficient enough grounds to kill me on the spot. They wouldn't care that I didn't know what the hell was going on, where I was or even _when_ I was. I wore the mark of Oa, and that would be the end of it.

The _worst_ part is that I can't say with certainty that the Guardians (effectively my bosses, if this was real and not some vivid hallucination) won't think along similar lines. I wore their weapon and their badge, as far as they were concerned, I now belonged to the Corps. Should I rebel…

Still, freaking out even _more_ certainly won't help me, and I _do_ in fact have the galaxy's most advanced supercomputer sitting on my finger, ready to answer most of those questions.

However, as I opened my mouth, I couldn't help but feel weirded out that I was talking at a piece of jewelry.

"Uhm… Ring? What's going on?"

++ _Please Clarify_ ++ a soft-spoken female voice said simply in my air, making me almost swat at it in reflex.

Like the world's greatest earbuds or something.

"Uhm, right. Well… where are we?"

++ _We Are Currently In Sector 3601 _++

… well, considering that, as far as I know, there are only _3600_ sectors in the DC Universe, this means that…

Actually, I have no fucking clue what that means.

"Ring. Which Green Lantern is assigned to this Sector?"

++ _You Are._ ++

"Right. Right. Of course I am. Ring, what's my designation and give me a rundown of what's in this sector."

++ _You Are Designated Michael McCole, Green Lantern Of Sector 3601. This Sector Contains Approximately 23 Suns, 138 Planets, 552 Moons And Upwards Of 2000 Planetoids And Large Asteroids. It Is Estimated That There Is Sentient Life On At Least 30 Planetoids, Moons Or Planets. It Is Unknown If This Sector Hosts Sapient Life. It Is Unknown What The Exact Dimensions Are Of This Sector. It Is Unknown Which Species Have Crossed Through This Sector. It Is Unknown-_ ++

"Alright, that's enough, thanks!" I hurriedly cut in, before I close my eyes and desperately rub my forehead.

So, I'm a Green Lantern, in an unknown Sector of the DC Universe, which the Guardians apparently known very little about, and with no idea of how I got here, or what I should do.

Well, I can ask the Ring about the first one, and I should be able to figure out the latter.

"Ring. How did we appear in Sector 3601?"

++ _… Unknown._ ++

…

"Wait what?! What the hell do you mean unknown!?"

++ _Clarification: It Is Unknown What Manner Of Transportation Was Used To Arrive In This Sector. It Is Unknown What Occurred Before 12 Minutes And 3.025 Seconds Before User Asked The Last Question. It Is Unknown How User And This Ring Were Connected. It Is Unknown-_ ++

"Right, right, I got it. You can stop now."

Okay, so actually figuring out what the hell happened to me will have to wait. For what, I don't know exactly, but all I know is that I'm floating in the middle of nowhere, with a Ring that doesn't have a clue how we ended up here either.

However, while I _can't_ figure out why the hell I'm here, I _can_ figure out what the hell I'm going to do.

Finding a planet should be my first priority. While floating in space like this isn't harmful to me as long as the Ring remains charged (it shields me from debris and radiation, continually creates the perfect atmospheric conditions and if needed I can survive on its energy alone, requiring no sustenance at all) it's still _very_ disorienting and disquieting.

Actually having a ground beneath my feet and a sky above my head will do wonders for my mental and emotional state.

And from there?

I suppose I'll figure that out when the time comes I suppose. Speaking of time, while I'm travelling to the nearest planet…

"Ring. Set a course for the nearest planet. While we travel, I want you to catch me up to speed with the history of the universe, up to the point that you can still recall that is."

++ _Very Well. Course Has Been Set. Approximate Travel Time: 23 Minutes And 7.821 Seconds. _++

Before she had even finished speaking, the soft green glow covering my body (which was clad in a very generic Green Lantern Uniform I only just noticed) flared up. A single tug on my right hand, and I went off hurtling into space again, though thankfully I didn't scream this time.

++ _Now, The History Of The Universe. The Universe Was Created. For A Period Of Time That Cannot Be Expressed With Words In The Human Language, The Planck Epoch Existed. Approximate Translation: It Was Very Hot. Then-_ ++

"Uhm, you know what? Why don't we just stick to the cliffnotes?" I weakly offered.

++ _Very Well. The Cliffnotes Of The History Of The Universe. The Universe Was Created. For A Period Of Time… _++

As the soft voice steadily droned on, I briefly lamented the fact that, when you ask the most advanced supercomputer the cliffnotes of nearly 14 billion years of history, you're _still _going to end up with a lecture that will span more than 23 minutes and 7.821 seconds.

* * *

**Time: 23 minutes and 7.821 seconds later**

** Place: Fifth Planet orbiting a small yellow star**

* * *

The planet that I landed on was… boring.

I know this is a strange thing to say when you first step foot on _literally_ another planet at the ass-end of the universe (it certainly isn't as impressive as 'One small step for man') but after more than twenty minutes of soaring across the cosmos, surrounded by inky blackness which is broken up by vibrant nebulae, twisting galaxies and glistening far-off stars…

Well, stepping foot on a landmass which consists almost entirely of barren taiga simply doesn't stack up.

Even when the grass is blue and the sky is greenish.

This little planet (it was barely bigger than Earth's Moon) was just on the edge of this star's life zone (or Circumstellar Habitable Zone, as the Ring kept on insisting), meaning that while it had enough liquid water and a sufficient atmospheric pressure to support life, said life really only consisted of sturdy vegetation, and a host of small organisms surrounding the hydrothermal vents of this planets two small oceans.

All in all, it wasn't really much to look at. Interestingly enough, according to intergalactic law, since I was the first sapient being to set foot on this planet, I got to name it. That didn't automatically make it my property, since that required several complicated bureaucratic steps, but considering that nobody really even knew that this planet existed, and it had no interesting recourses as far as the Ring could tell, nobody would care if I just straight up claimed it.

And so I did exactly that.

Hello little planet, you are henceforth called Stupendous McAwesomeface III, seat of power to the great Michael McCole, ordinary human hopelessly lost in a fictional universe and probably slightly out of his mind the more that fact starts to sink in.

With a despairing sigh I flop down on the springy tufts of grass, thankful to feel something solid underneath me for the first time since I woke in this ridiculous situation. As I suspected, actually having surroundings to base my positioning off, instead of simply spinning ass over teakettle through the void of space _does_ put my mind at ease.

Unfortunately, it makes it wander to topics that I feel I should better steer clear off for the foreseeable future, unless I want to suffer a mental breakdown.

Lying on my back, looking up at the greenish sky (its color reminds me of the Aurora Borealis back on Earth. It's kinda pretty actually), I fold my hands behind my head as I contemplate what I should do next.

According to the Rings "brief" history of the universe and everything in it, some of the major crisis that pose a direct threat to the existence of the Green Lantern Corps (and thus _me_) haven't happened yet.

No Hal Jordan murdering every Lantern he sees.

No Black Lanterns murdering everything else.

Hell, there wasn't even a Red or Yellow Lantern Corps.

In fact, a _lot_ hadn't happened yet. It was difficult to estimate, considering the sheer scope of time that the Guardians and the Rings thought in (they were older than most Old Gods for crying out loud), and how little they cared for a backwater planet like Earth, but from the look of it, most of those events wouldn't happen for several _thousand_ years.

So…

What now?

My knowledge of the DC Universe (boosted as it was through my access to the Power Ring) wasn't absolute, and had been in large part based around events and peoples from Earth that didn't even exist now.

Sure, Vandal Savage is roaming the lands and Atlantis (probably) hasn't sunk yet, but other than that…

As for the wider galaxy, I knew even less about that (though the Ring certainly did), and I certainly didn't know anyone that I wanted to meet a few thousand years in the past.

Beings like Lobo come to mind…

But where did that leave me? Should I just sit on this planet for however long the Ring would keep me alive waiting for… for _what_, exactly? For a Manhunter to find me, or for Nekron to breach into this universe, or for the Anti-Matter to wage his attack on the positive matter Multi-Verse?

The Universe was filled with cosmic horrors, was I really going to live the rest of my days on this barren planet, waiting for them to have their way with existence as life knows it, _hiding_ like a coward?

_Hell_ no.

I wasn't a hero, I had no illusions about that. I wasn't the type of guy to put on a cape, puff my chest and then track down evildoers to unleash my own emotional baggage on in the form of a good old bout of fisticuffs (looking at you Batman, get yourself a fucking therapist for god's sake).

But I sure as _shit_ wasn't going to wait for death to claim me, in whatever aspect she chose to use.

Some cosmic threat wants to remake all of existence?

He'll have to go through me to do it.

Sitting up, I look at the Ring on my hand, feeling determination well up inside me.

I had work to do.

"Ring. What are your current energy levels?"

++ _Energy Levels Currently At 89.689 Percent._ ++

"Can I still recharge you with my personal Power Battery, which hopefully is linked up to the Central Power Battery?"

++ _Correct. Your Personal Power Battery Is Currently Located In Your Own Sub-Dimension._ ++

"Alright. Am I correct in assuming that you carry with you the knowledge of Oan scientific discoveries and blueprints of their technology?"

++ _You Are Correct, Though The Available Data Is Not As Complete As The Library On Oa._ ++

"Doesn't matter, I want you teach all of it to me, as fast as possible."

The Green Lantern Rings are capable of emitting and storing energy (though stored energy will not be converted into Willpower-energy, it can only be released in the same form of energy it was absorbed in), and even transform energy into matter (it was how it generated an atmosphere for me in the void of space). If I can use the templates inside the Ring's database to create machinery, then I could do research into even greater powers. Even if I can't form said machinery from my hard-light constructs, then the Ring should still be able to teach me how to extract the recourses I needed to create the tools I needed to create said machinery.

Forges, generators, spectrometers, just about every device that you would find in Tony Starks or Reed Richard's workshop, I would create. I would build a grand laboratory in which I would research the Forces of the DC Universe.

The Emotional Electromagnetic Forces.

The Three Fundamental Forces (electromagnetism, gravitation and nuclear interaction).

The Force which superseded those Three Forces (quantum).

The Speed Force.

Intrinsic Fields.

_Magic_.

I could abuse the energy absorption capabilities of the Ring by setting up shop _inside _stars, or even black holes once I'm powerful enough.

I could use the Ring's database of alien species to alter my own human body into something far superior and longer lasting. Looking into Kryptionian and Daxamite DNA to figure out how some species are capable of taking in an energy source and turning it into overwhelming physical force.

I could create technology that is on par with even the New Gods.

And I had _millennia_ to achieve it all.

++ _Very Well. Lesson Plan Has Been Created. Lesson One: The Fundamental Rules Of Mathematics. _++

"Wait, wait, hold on! I suck at math! Can't we skip to the good part, like where you show me how to build a hover-tank or a lightsaber?!" I ask desperately.

++ …_ No. Lesson One: The Fundamental Rules Of Mathematics. Algebraic Expressions and Equations With Parentheses And Variables. In Order To Find X… _++

As I fell to my knees with a despairing groan, the female voice still chattering away in my ear, I considered the possibility that I might actually need those millennia in order to get my shit done.

* * *

**Time: Late 1800's by Earth's standards**

** Location: Atmosphere of Krypton**

* * *

Krypton in its prime is… something else. This isn't the first time that I've visited this planet (c'mon, it's the birthplace of _Superman_ for crying out loud! This entire planet is like a tourist trap to me!) but it has been several centuries since my last visit.

The Kryptonians had already been a highly advanced species even then, but highly isolationist. They had space-worthy vessels, and were fully capable of stamping civilizations out of even the most barren planet surfaces.

They just… didn't.

A species with their power and level of technology should've conquered or colonized an empire stretching across several sectors. Hell, they wouldn't even be the first ones to do it! But for some reason, the vast majority of Kryptonians chose to remain on their home planet, living in their futuristic cities of Kandor, Argo and Kryptonopolis just to name a few.

Considering just how long their lifespans were, it was somewhat of a small miracle that the planet hadn't turned into an ecumenopolis, but then again, Kryptonian tech really was in a league of its own. Highly advanced power generators supplied the megacities, where superstructures offered comfortable habitation to millions of souls. As a post-poverty society, life in Krypton's mega-cities was a cut above the galactic standard, with truly massive forms of entertainment and a whole slew of provisions to make life as enjoyable as it could possibly be when you had to share a planet with fourteen billion other souls.

But sustaining that much life was starting to take its toll on the planet. Or rather its core. Its _uranium_ core. Its _uranium_ core which the Kryptonians had begun tapping into well over a thousand years ago. Despite their great scientific achievements, they didn't foresee what every single comic book geek knew by heart.

The core would grow more and more unstable over the coming century, until it would violently explode, taking all of the Kryptonian race (minus the citizens of Argo and Kandor, as well as Superman) with it.

I wasn't the only one who saw the signs. A bright-eyed young Jor-El was starting to question his society's means of meeting its staggering energy need, while a rookie Tomar-Re was keeping an eye on the planet on orders from the Guardians of the Universe.

Still, I wasn't here to save them from themselves. It wasn't because I was too afraid of the butterfly effect, which so often paralyzes other Main Characters whenever they find themselves in fictional universes.

In fact, I'm not really all that bothered with adhering to the butterfly effect at all. I had emerged into this world in a previously unmapped (or possibly even non-existent) Sector well over a _millennium_ before Action Comics #1 would occur. The moment I set foot in Sector 2814 and looked down on Earth, canon was inevitably changed, however minor it might be.

Besides, my comic book knowledge wasn't even expansive enough to know the entirety of canon in the first place, so why even bother with being as inactive as possible?

Additionally, consider the number of butterflies in the world. Then try to estimate the amount of butterfly flaps there are in a year. Then compare that to the number of hurricanes in a year.

With such a low percentile of butterflies being responsible for hurricanes, I felt that I could take my chances and venture into the wider galaxy.

_But_ saving an _entire race_? One as powerful as the Kryptonians no less? Never mind that they probably wouldn't listen to my warnings in the first place, but what the hell would _that_ do to the universe two hundred years from now?

That's not a butterfly, that's fucking _Mothra_ we're talking about here!

So no, if Jor-El cannot convince his own super-advanced people that messing with the uranium core of their planet for the past millennium has destabilized it to the point that their entire planet has turned into an atomic bomb, then I'll wash my hands of the entire thing.

In my previous life, I might have found that cruel, but I have spent almost a hundred times the amount of time that I had lived on Earth in complete isolation on a barren planet that I had named Stupendous McAwesomeface III.

And _that_ was close to 1700 years ago (give or take a couple of decades). Safe to say that by now, most of my morals and emotions were rather skewed when compared against the regular human norm. The again, when I replaced the majority of my human body with advanced bio-technology, I lost quite a bit of my humanity as well.

Thankfully, this situation should allow me to shed even more of the former, while regaining some of the latter.

I was going to expand the number of Kryptonians that survive the destruction of Krypton.

Briefly I thought about kidnapping an orphan or something, but then I considered that this wasn't exactly conductive to my whole "connect with something _other_ than an AI in a piece of jewelry"-shtick that I had going on here. 'Sides, while kidnapping a baby or child Kryptonian was certainly _doable_ (my mastery over energy signatures was advanced to the point that there were only a handful of machines in the entirety of the universe that could spot me when I cloaked myself from all spectrums) it was also a hassle.

Evading Krypton's security, finding a target, subduing the target, smuggling the target past Krypton's security, travel all the way back to Stupendous McAwesomeface III without an incident occurring and then raise a Kryptonian in my seat of power _without_ having it turn on me when it decides I'm a monster just because of a little kidnapping.

So _bothersome_, when there was a far simpler solution.

"Name please?"

"Hello, Michael McCole."

"Greetings Mr. McCole, are you here on pleasure or business?"

"Business."

"Alright, your documentation seems to be in order, please proceed to Gate 34-CX. Have a pleasant stay on Krypton. Next!"

Sure, Kryptonians had an irrational dislike of travelling outside of their system. That didn't mean that the rest of the galaxy didn't want to visit _them_ instead. Krypton still had to trade for a variety of things, ranging from exotic foodstuffs to simple artisans or base materials and then of course there was the tourism to consider. That meant it had a space port, with regularly scheduled ferries to the surface. It's still odd for me to realize that, under their red sun Rao, Kryptonians _weren't_ godlike beings, instead dependent on technology to get around like the majority of beings in the universe.

They could still bend Earth-grade steel with their bare hands even in this weakened state though.

Then again, so can I.

It didn't take long until I was standing in the arrival's hall of Kryptonopolis, from which I leisurely started exploring the city. I didn't intend to return to this planet any time soon, and over a hundred years from now, there won't even _be_ a planet to return to, so I'm content to take admire this city before it's gone and start wandering, a feeling of melancholy coming over me. I had all the time in the world: this body would last for millennia, and could theoretically last as long as the Central Power Battery on Oa did. Even now, I had projects going on in my own Sector that spanned decades to even centuries, from Anti-Matter Generators, to Dyson Spheres to Quantum Tunneling.

Yet these people would see their entire world end in nuclear fire in little over a century.

Considering the lifespans of these people, a single century was a blink of an eye.

To something as long lived as me, these people might as well be dead already.

Of course I hadn't always had such an outlook on time (and life in general), but nearly _two millennia_ have passed ever since I woke up in this reality and a lot had changed since then. I had spent close to two hundred years simply learning the technology and science that the Ring had to teach me, surviving solely from its energy. At the end of those two centuries, Stupendous McAwesomeface III had been littered with projects I had built during my lessons, the deep gauges that pockmarked its surface a testament to whenever my experiments had backfired.

I had aged somewhat more graciously than the battered planet. My hair had nearly reached my knees and had become a snowy white, while my skin had become wrinkled and leathery. Yet I had moved with a speed and strength similar to a human in the prime of his life, the Green energy of Willpower coursing through my body giving me a highly increased vitality.

But finally, after nearly _two hundred_ years of uninterrupted lessons and practical applications, the Ring decided that I had a sufficient grasp of Oan levels of technology, and from then on, my _true_ work began.

Upgrading my body had been something that I had worked on throughout my lessons of the Ring (from replacing musculature with bio-polymers to replacing organs with mini-fusion reactors) yet it was only the first of many projects as I left Stupendous McAwesomeface III on long missions throughout my own Sector. I even popped in on other Sectors as well from time to time, though I was always careful to keep my presence to a minimum.

The less beings like the Guardians that are aware of my existence, the better for my health and freedom.

Many of those missions had been for deep scans of the species or technologies in those sectors that the Ring didn't have complete data on. While I don't mind experimenting on sentient beings (one of the moons back in Stupendous McAwesomeface III's stellar system has basically turned into an enormous zoo over the centuries), but I'm not _entirely_ comfortable with experimenting on _sapient_ beings.

Not to say that I haven't done so occasionally, neither I nor various alien governments have any problems with dissecting absolute scum that were slated for death row anyways in the name of SCIENCE!

Still, I consciously try to keep it to a minimum, and whenever I do experiment on sapient beings, I try to keep it as humane and non-intrusive as possible, especially on those rare occasions where I'm _not_ experimenting on convicted villains but the odd volunteer that I picked up during my travels.

Considering the vast capabilities of my Ring, humane and non-intrusive experimentation had been surprisingly easy.

The reason why I took great pains to operate this way was because… well, I know that I'm not exactly what humans consider to be _sane_ anymore. Meaning that technically I'm already a Mad Scientist.

I'd much rather refrain from accidently sliding into becoming an _Evil_ Mad Scientist, since those always appear to be defeated by people in spandex tights and thrown in jail.

Understandably, I much prefer to avoid that scenario.

You get so little work done in jail!

As I had been musing on my fate and the past millennium and a half of experimentation with the Forces of the Universe, I realized that my feet had carried me to my destination.

That or the Ring.

Over the many, many, many, _many_ years together, where I had lived of literally nothing else but the energy she supplied me, I had found that the AI in the Ring had… grown. She was no longer a tool or a weapon that I used. She was my closest friend and confidant that I have ever had, often anticipating my needs before I even realized that I had them, and offering me comfort when I didn't know that I needed it.

And sometimes, she would make sure that I didn't walk face first into a wall, like now.

Looking up, I read the holographic sign above the door: "Nimda An-Dor's Home for the Orphaned". If I recall correctly from my days in my previous life spent wiki-crawling, then Nimda An-Dor was the wife of Jor-El the First, who was the first Kryptonian to achieve hyperspace travel and who visited Earth (the reason why Jor-El the Second sent Kal-El there in order to save him). That makes Nimda An-Dor the maternal grandmother of both Superman and Supergirl.

With that lineage, I'm not entirely surprised the woman founded an orphanage.

For all that Kryptonians are long lived, live in a highly advanced society and (under the right circumstances) are ridiculously powerful, they are not immortal. While dying due to diseases is rare these days, it is not entirely unheard of, and sometimes, people simply have accidents.

Such is life.

The majority of Kryptonians that die of other causes than old age, tend to come from its military. While the Kryptonians aren't expanding, they _are_ exploring, and the universe is a dangerous place, even for Kryptonians. That's not even going into the countless raider crews that scour the galaxy, sometimes a rag-tag bunch of individuals, sometimes entire species that travel like locusts from one oasis to the next, leaving only barren planets in their wake.

And the military of Krypton is what keeps those horrors from affecting the peaceful lives of the Kryptonians on their home planet.

Well, they keep them from _directly_ affecting the populace here. As Nimda An-Dor realized and the orphanage shows, even in a civilizations such as this one, death is still a constant companion to life. Undoubtedly, the majority of the children here have lost both parents due to both of them having perished in the line of duty, or losing the single parent that they had to begin with.

Due to being a species with extensive knowledge and power over their own genetics, they have taken child planning to a whole new level. As in, when a Kryptonian (be it male or female) wants a child, they plan that child down to its genetic structure, and then order it, usually providing their own DNA and having it matched with the desired strands, though simply mixing and matching from the available database isn't unheard of. The child is then vat-grown and presto! The kryptonian has his or her perfect little baby, without an ounce of pain that's usually involved in putting a child on the world.

Natural births occasionally still happen, sometimes between couples, sometimes when a Kryptonian woman decides she has found an appropriate mate with the desired genetic material, but it's dying out. By the time Superman is born, he will be the first natural birth in a century.

Something about that makes me… sad. As if these people have lost something, somehow.

I'm ripped from my musings by the glass door of the building smoothly opening, a young brunette looking up at me with a somewhat surprised expression on her face.

"Yes? Can I help you?"

I can understand her confusion. While Krypton's high-society and advanced technology does make it a tourist destination, not many aliens decide to come here, much less visit orphanages, mostly due to the somewhat snobbishness of the Kryptonians.

And I definitely stand out.

For one, I'm clad in highly advanced power-armor, but my modifications to my body are also highly visible.

I'm taller than most humanoids species, but not by much and well-proportioned (think somewhere between Bronze Age superheroes and Rob Liefeld's creations). I also have a tail, elongated ears like a Night Elf, a head that I modeled off the Prothean race and four arms.

Not exactly your run off the mill appearance, though in my defense, there are weirder looking species out there.

I didn't really alter my appearance to look like a hodgepodge of different alien races but… well, it sorta _is_. After replacing much of my body with bio-mechanical components, I started scouring the galaxy for the best species, whose DNA templates (or whatever else they had instead) I would use to fashion the best body for myself in my sprawling genetics research centers.

Still, while this body's capabilities were certainly nothing to scoff at (I could easily overpower these people in their weakened state), it still paled should I be able to base a new body off of a Kryptonian template.

Hence, me standing at one of the very few orphanages on Krypton.

"Hello, I'm looking to adopt." I say in a tone as pleasant as possible.

At that, the girl's eyes widen and she quickly steps out of the building, hurriedly closing the door behind her as she tilts her chin up at me in defiance.

"While I hope that you find a child who you can give a happy home to, I'm afraid that we don't have a policy of placing our children with aliens. We are aware of people interested in our genetics, so you'll understand our hesitation of placing our children with outsiders." The girl hurriedly says in a firm, but not aggressive tone.

"Of course, I understand. However-." I say with a small smile, before I clench my upper-right fist.

With that, a bright green flash briefly blinds her as a small shockwave of sheer power shakes the ground under her feet. When she opens her eyes again, her mouth falls open as well in sheer surprise before she controls herself again, looking up at me as I stand in my full Green Lantern regalia.

"- I think you'll find my credentials more than sufficient enough."

For a moment, we're just staring at each other, barely even noticing the onlookers that have stopped whatever it was that they were doing in order to gawk and stare. Our stare is finally broken when the young woman speaks up in a somewhat stunned voice.

"Let's take this inside."

"Lead the way." I reply with a warm smile.

Of course, merely showing that I was a member of a Universe spanning peace keeping corps wasn't enough for me to simply point, say "that one!", pick it up and just stroll out of the place. The badge had bought me goodwill, a lot more than a regular alien could hope for in Kryptonopolis, but nothing more.

Adoption back on Earth was a complicated process, and here on Krytpon it's much the same. When I was presented with the enormous stack of bureaucratic hoops that I would need to jump through in order to adopt one of their god-potential children, I merely sighed and said that I would get a room in the nearest hotel.

As I've said, I've got all the time in the world, but the longer I spend on this planet, the more chance that Tomar-Re, the Lantern of this Sector, will pick up on my energy signature and come to investigate, which will open up a whole load of questions that I have steadily been avoiding for centuries now.

Still, the more I kept meeting with the young woman (she was a distant cousin of Nimda An-Dor, the founder of the orphanage, who I met a few times, but the day to day running was left to Thala Dor-Van), the smoother the process went. I could prove that I had the means to support the child, as a member of the Green Lantern Coprs, my references were impeccable and considering that I had a whole Sector worth of planets on which to raise the child, living accommodations were taken care of as well.

After roughly a month, I was allowed to observe the children. The youngest seemed to be only a few years old, while the oldest was somewhere about fourteen. All in all, there only seemed to be a little under two dozen children running around in the large indoor garden/pool area. Considering that Kryptonopolis is a city of nearly 12 million people, and this is one of only three orphanages, that's a rather impressively low mortality and birth rate.

Out of all the children, only one seemed to stand out to me (and considering that one was all I really wanted and needed, that suited me just fine). He wasn't the eldest, being 11 years old at my lowest estimate, nor was he the biggest or the strongest. But I saw him fearlessly walk up to one of the older girls who had been viciously harassing one of the younger kids, and deck her with a single punch, after which he played with the bullied kid until it started laughing again.

Thala Dor-Van had been absolutely mortified, ready to rush in there and drag the kid out by the ear (something she had an almost daily experience with, I later learned), but I simply laughed her off, making my way over to the child.

All of the children's eyes land on me (I'm rather hard to miss after all, considering my body and the glowing Green Lantern Uniform), the toddler looking up with wide, curious eyes, while the kid merely looks more and more suspicious, the closer I get to the younger child.

Got a real protective streak this one, huh?

Creating several softly glowing hard light constructs of about two dozen kittens, I sent them scurrying and flying about the toddler, who gleefully claps his hands and start chasing them, and he's soon joined by the other children as well (_damn_ they are fast. Even top athletes on earth would've been hard-pressed to keep up with a bunch of Kryptonian children, even under a _red _sun!).

That leaves me and the little protector alone. Walking over to the nearest bench, I pat the spot next to me with an inviting smile, but instead the kid merely keeps staring at me as he crosses his arms over his chest and lifts his chin.

Surprisingly, he's the first of us to talk.

"You're an alien." He simply states, a closed off expression on his face.

It's briefly replaced by a blush and a wince when Thala Dor-Van hisses a furious "Sul-Da!", but he keeps up his stance, making me chuckle once again.

"Indeed I am." I simply reply.

"Aliens don't get to adopt Kryptonian orphans."

"_Most_ aliens don't." I correct him with a cheeky smile, as I raise on of my four hands.

"What makes you think that you'll get one of us?" he says, and there's a definite note of hurt and hostility creeping into his voice.

"Ah. You think that, because I'm an alien, I won't be able to adopt anyways, so all I'm doing is giving your fellow children false hope. Is that it?" I suddenly realize.

He doesn't say anything, but his silence is enough.

"I'm a Green Lantern, kid. Do you know what that means?" I ask him in a low voice as I lean forwards.

"You're a cop." He bluntly states.

"Not just any cop! I'm a _super_ cop!" I exclaim boldly, giving him four thumbs-ups.

"And what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Sul-Da!"

"I mean, what the heck is that supposed to mean?"

"It means _this_." I say with a wide smile, as I push my willpower into my Ring.

Immediately, an enormous hologram fills the space between us, showing planets orbiting stars, spacecrafts zipping through alien cities, vast vista's crossing our sights. I keep showing off more of my centuries worth of travel throughout the universe, amusement rising within me as I see that Thala Dor-Van and the other children have joined little Sul-Da in looking upon the vivid holograms with expressions of awe on their face.

"A _super_ cop means that I go where no one else has gone before. I keep the peace, battle villains and protect the people wherever I go. Every time I step outside my door, an adventure awaits. I'm an explorer, a scientist, a peacekeeper and an inventor, all in one. _I_ am a _Green Lantern_, which is just about the coolest job in the entire galaxy!" I proudly boast.

"Wicked." Little Sul-Da whispers as he looks at several Vrang dreadnoughts that cut through the void of space with their impressive size.

"Indeed. And I need a successor."

At that, Sul-Da's eyes snap towards mine, comprehension already dawning in them.

"I'm going to continue being a Green Lantern for a _long_ time. But, my Sector doesn't have any sapient life. While this means that I have a lot of freedom to go on wild adventurous all over the universe, it _also_ means that, when I retire, there won't be anyone to wield this Power Ring after me. So, I'm adopting and what better choice is there than a Kryptonian to carry on my legacy."

It was only partially bullshit what I was talking here. I had no intention of retiring anytime soon. In fact, I might just survive to see the end of the universe (or even survive it) if all of my plans work out. Which means that I don't really need a successor.

Still, the company would be nice, and having a legacy, someone to pass some of things that I had learned and achieved after over a thousand years in isolation onto… it was a nice thought.

An even nicer thought was the power that would be at my fingertips after I had cracked the Kryptonian genetic code.

Not to mention after I compare it to Damaxians as well.

After my brief speech, I can see Sul-Da sink into deep thought as he gives my offer far more thought than I expected out of an 11-year-old child, while off to the side I can see Thala Dor-Van surreptitiously wipe away her tears. Despite the trouble Sul-Da has given her over the years, she's clearly saddened to lose him.

Then Sul-Da looks up at me with a piercing look.

"You only need _one_ succesor, right?"

"Correct."

"And you live very far away, right?"

"One of the furthest Sectors away from Oa, yes."

"And your long adventures mean that you don't really get a lot of vacations right?"

"Well, as I said, for a Green Lantern I have a lot of freedom, but I do sometimes embark on missions that can last months or even years."

"I see." The kid replies, looking over his fellow orphans with a somber look, one which is answered in kind by them as well, with the exception of the youngest children, who are still gawking at the pretty green lights surrounding them.

I know Sul-Da's answer before he gives it to me.

"I'm sorry. But you have to look for a successor somewhere else. I have a mission of my own." He says, looking up at me with misty eyes and a wavering lip, though his back is straight and his shoulders are squared.

As much as it hurts him to give up on being adopted (by a Green Lantern no less), the kid is determined to stick by his siblings.

"Sul-Da… please, I know this is hard for you. It's hard for all of us. But this is a _great_ opportunity! You'll never get a chance like this again! Don't stay behind for our sakes, go out there and be the amazing person that I know you can be." Thala Dor-Van says kindly as she kneels next to the child, placing both of her arms on Sul-Da's shoulders.

"I can't leave you guys. You need me. And… I need you to." The kid says in a commendably steady voice, though tears are now rolling down his cheeks.

"Oh Sul-Da. My little Sul-Da." Thala whispers, completely heart-broken, engulfing the child in a hug as she holds on to him.

By now, even the youngest children have caught on to the fact that something's wrong, my green light constructs (though they were mostly the Ring's work) no longer able to distract them. As several children start openly bawling, adding even further waterworks to the drama that was already unfolding in front of my eyes, I feel a pang in where once used to be my human heart and I give a prolonged sigh.

"Thala Dor-Van. I suppose there isn't a limit on the number of children that one can adopt?"

For a moment, two dozen pair of teary eyes settle on me, before I'm buried under an avalanche of jubilant Kryptonian children, all yelling and laughing even though I'm pretty sure that about a third of them don't even know what's going on.

++ _I Take That As A Yes. You Are Now A Father Of 19 Kryptonian Children. Mazzel-Tov._ ++

Thanks Ring.

In the end, I ended up the official guardian of all Kryptonian children of the Nimda An-Dor's Home for the Orphaned. Of course, this caused a bit off a fuss, Green Lantern or no, but most of the complaints were silenced when Nimda An-Dor herself gave me her blessing after an extensive interview with me, Thala and each child individually (she's a genuinely nice and badass lady, telling the Council of Krypton straight to their faces to shut it, since she was sure this was in the children's best interest, which according to her was the only authority she had to obey).

Whatever protests remained after that were silenced when Thala Dor-Van told me in no uncertain terms that I wouldn't be taking her children unless I took her with me as well. Bringing the amount of Kryptonians that I brought home with me a nice and even twenty.

Even though I set out to obtain only a single _one_.

Why can't things go my way for once?

Standing in the inner yard of the Orphanage, surrounded by Thala and the children and all the luggage that they had packed, while a few score of onlookers waved goodbye to them, Nimda An-Dor among them, I raised my hand with Ring on it.

Immediately, a bright green bubble snapped over us, swiftly raising us from the ground. Several of the children stumbled, though I noticed with interest that Sul-Da remained unmoved, simply observing the forcefield around him with a keen, intelligent gaze.

"Inertia dampeners?"

"Correct kid. 10 points." I said with a smile, which widened when the child puffed out his chest at the pride, though he looked somewhat puzzled at the reward.

And then he didn't have the chance to look surprised anymore, because Ring kicked things into overdrive.

Here's the thing about Green Lanterns and their Sectors. Space is large. Like, _really_ large. Meaning that Sectors are huge as well. And for an entire Sector, which can hold anywhere from 40 to 500 worlds, only _two_ Green Lanterns act as first responders to any crisis the indigenous people cannot overcome.

Meaning that Green Lanterns had to be fast.

A rank and file GL could achieve speeds several times the speed of sound within atmosphere, due to the Ring absorbing friction and creating an aerodynamic envelope, among a myriad of other things. In space, these guys could reach speeds approaching lightspeed.

However, I have spent centuries studying the Three Forces that keep the universe together. Deep studies into gravitational and electromagnetic forces had eventually shown me how the energy of my ring could interact with those forces on the sub-atomic level, delving deeper into the science than just about every Green Lantern currently active.

So, when I breached Krypton's atmosphere and left their system in under ten minutes, Ring flared with an emerald light, enveloping us as space was twisted around us, and I _slingshotted_ us across Time and Space.

From Sector 2813 to Sector 3601 in less than an hour.

The technology of Oa and the capabilities of Ring will never cease to amaze me.

Hearing gasps from the children around me, and from Thala who's standing next to me, I smile widely at their reactions to the planet below me.

It has changed a lot since I first landed there, now over 1700 years ago. For one, it's about fifty times larger than it was (making it nearly the same size as the sun, kept in orbit only by my technology in its core), it now has various ecosystems and mountain rages far more hospitable than Earth can even dream of, and it has four moons.

One moon is basically a single jungle. It's where I keep all the sentient beasts and plants that I've come across during my travels and that I have experimented on.

The second moon is clearly artificial, and looks somewhat like the Death Star, only it doesn't have a core. Instead, several bands crisscross each other, forming a sphere, while several spires tens of kilometers high stab towards the sky. It is where I study Technology.

The third moon is dark and covered in arrays and glyphs large enough to be seen from space, several temples and ziggurats large enough to be taken for mountains lining its surface. It is where I study Magic.

The fourth moon is still in construction. There's a core, covered in glyphs, but clearly artificial and heavy, like a Dwarven structure. Half a shell is formed above it, held up by a forest of metal struts, and again covered in runes, though even from here various large-scale machinery can be seen. It's where I attempt to create Magi-Tech.

Descending towards the first planet that I set foot upon in this universe, I spread out all of my four arms with an enormous grin on my face.

"Welcome! Welcome, to Stupendous McAwesomeface III!"

…

…

…

"Really?"

"C'mon Thala, I was lonely." I whined.

* * *

**AN:** This was _a lot_ of fun to write, I'm really liking this setting! I'm going to keep it as a one-shot for now though, as there are a lot of other projects that I want to work on first, before returning to this one. Let me know what you think!

**Fun Fact:** The 2011 Green Lantern movie starring Ryan Reynolds was originally intended to be a comedy starring Jack Black as the lead role.

_Special shout-out to my wonderful Patrons, IronmanMarkIV, justlovereadin, Daniel Dorfman, CJ Elsen, Sam, Carn Krauss, ReaperScythe, Thordur hrafn, Kyle Reese, Kahn, RLStained, Vu and Roman Krupkin. Extra-special mention for Shaman95, who came to me with the idea for this story in the first place. Thank you all so much!_


	2. Chapter 2

_**Green Lantern's Blight!**_

* * *

**258 AA **(After Arrival in the DC-verse)**/ 364 AD **(Valentinian I The Great becomes the last great Western Roman Emperor and founds the Valentinian Dynasty)

It had been several centuries since I stranded on Stupendous McAwesomeface III and things were going… well, they were going as well as could reasonably expected from a human who found himself in an unknown region of space in a fictional universe with the only sentient company for lightyears around taking the shape of talking piece of jewelry.

+_\+ I am afraid I have to ask you yet again: would you please cease blowing up mountains?++_

"I AM LORD AND MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE! ALL SHALL BOW IN TERROR AT MY AWESOME POWER AND BLINDING DANCE MOVES!"

A distant explosion and the sound of tons of rubble collapsing in on itself were my only answer.

++ _Curious. I wasn't aware that Lantern Rings could develop a yearning for alcoholic substances. Please hold while I try to determine whether that is impressive or worrying._++

See? I was doing just fine. All things considered.

The reason for my latest emotional breakdown and lapse of sanity (Number 256 I knew, since Ring was diligently keeping count) was because of a failure in my latest exam involving manipulating extreme gravitational forces. Ring didn't exactly do standardized tests whenever she wanted to see my grasp of whatever latest info dump she had unleashed on me, believing more in… _practical_ applications of knowledge.

In the beginning, this was fine. During what amounted to an entire human lifetime, I had devoted myself to the sciences, at a pace and regarding subjects not too different from what could be achieved by my kind back in my own universe. It was fairly standard, if ridiculously expansive, covering literally all subjects Ring could think off, ranging from advanced mathematics, to astronomy, to microbiology and so forth. Additionally, there were several electives more suited to a fictional universe, such as xenobiology, intergalactic politics and economy and god-biografies. Ring had been created by one of (if not _the_) oldest sentient species in the universe, and they had watched everything else in the universe develop since then. They had seen gods rise and fall, stars be born and die, civilisations bloom only to crumble and they had recorded it all.

And then they put (parts of) that in Ring.

As you can imagine, some of those "lessons" took years to complete. Ring was an advanced AI created by some of the smartest beings in the universe, but I was still human, and thus limited by my human brain and intellect, at least at first. I think I was almost 80 or 90 years old (and even though I had begun to look it, Ring was capable of keeping me in the fittest shape of my life, even when compared to my mid-twenties something self back in my old universe) before Ring approved of the first major improvement to my brain and thus my intellect, mostly because she felt that trying to teach me any further would yield less and less results.

Sure she could guide me towards scientific discoveries unknown to humanity, but there's only so much information that the human brain can store, or leaps of logic the human mind can fathom. In short, my hardware was falling behind on the updates she was trying to apply to my software.

Thus began a long road of shedding my human limits and embracing the intergalactic possibilities of transhumanism. It began rather tame (by DC standards that is), with drugs and gene-editing, but as my knowledge about varying branches of biology expanded, so too did my jumps in physical abilities increase in size as I learned how to incorporate alien organisms into myself. Eventually I started designing and building bodies from scratch, sometimes from templates taken from other species, sometimes building on several theoretical principles, almost always augmented by new technological advancements.

As this happened at what would have normally been the end of my normal lifespan, the changes to my body helped my mind accept the new scale of thought that was required of multi-centenarians. Human brains weren't meant to experience immortality and it had been sometimes speculated that even if humans were able to live for millenia, most of us would end up committing suicide somewhere between 200 and 300 years. The mind of a human simply couldn't cope with such an extended existence.

However, I technically (and literally) no longer had a human brain, so while the transition was still mind-boggling at times (accounting for mental breakdown Number 198 to 246 according to Ring's scorekeeping) I could deal with it, embracing both my increased physical abilities and above all my vastly improved intellect.

Unfortunately, this had also meant that Ring felt she could step up the pace, going in-depth on some of the theoretical problems of science that humans had only dare guess at. One of the more memorable ones were her insistence on completely exploring everything known (and unknown) about black holes.

More importantly, she wanted to focus on the common _use_ of black holes.

It had taken me some time to completely wrap my head around the fact that a singularity in the space-time continuum (not even a _thing_ really, just a pinprick in the fabric of the universe that laughs in the face of the laws of Nature) could even be utilized, and on a regular basis at that.

At least by species on the level of the Guardians, that is.

Before we could even get started on the usefulness of some of the most destructive objects in the universe (not counting stuff like gods or Doomsday-like beings), we first had to deeply explore the science behind gravity, which took a significant amount of time, partly because at that point I was also busy travelling to other planets and going on small adventures in and out of my personal Sector and partly because it's just really fucking complicated stuff.

Even back in my home universe, gravity was recognized as one of the fundamental forces of the universe and one that had only recently been studied in depth on the same level that, say, electromagnetic forces had been for decades. There was still much that wasn't known about it when I left, but which Ring already had a full database on. But in this universe, the rabbit hole went even further.

Beyond the knowledge that humans had yet to stumble upon (such as _all _the interactions that gravity could have with matter, anti-matter and dark matter, just to name a few), there was the comic book-aspect to consider. Because, just like back home, gravity is a fundamental force here in the DC Universe. _Unlike_ back home however, _here_ fundamental forces tended to be somewhat more… noticable.

The Speed Force was perhaps the most well-known one, due to its curious affinity for bonding with gingers from a small backwater planet, but it wasn't the only Force out there. Directly tied to gravity was the Strength Force, which imbued any conduits with… well, _strength_. The moment Ring started my lessons on gravity I had chomped at the bit to turn myself into a conduit, but my best friend this side of the universe (and, sadly, the _other _side as well given that she was my _only_ friend in this universe) metaphorically bopped me on the head and shut that down hard.

It's all fun and games until your hard-light weaponry gets used on _you_ for a change.

Not only wouldn't she allow me to turn myself into conduits for extra-dimensional energies before I fully understood the science behind them (I whined until she _very_ ominously told me that "darker and older things than universal forces are watching". I quickly shut up after that), she also reminded me that it was useless to try for now. The Strength Force alongside the Sage Force were still trapped behind a Force barrier until Zolomon manages to trick the two Flashes to break it in some 1500 years or so, and the other Forces were out of the question as well. In the 25th Century of the future, Eobard Thawne might have would have shall made (I think?) the Reverse Speed Force, but since there's no Flash to battle in _this_ time, there's no real reason for him to emerge in the timestream here, which means access to his dimension is a no-go as well. Considering it will still take well over a _thousand_ years before the Flash is born, there might even be a chance that there's no future yet in which Thawne has been inspired by him to create his personal extra-dimensional energy (and wasn't _that_ a feat I'd like to replicate), meaning that even if I had already managed to time travel, there might not even be something for me to teleport _to_.

Even worse than that, the _true_ counterpart to the Speed Force, called the Still Force, was still hidden away behind the Source Wall, alongside some of the nastiest aspects that the writers of DC had managed to come up with. Interesting stuff when it's a comic book you're just holding in your hands of course, but another matter entirely when you actually share a Multiverse with such horribleness. Just the thought of breaking the Wall and freeing what's kept a bay behind it might cause the Source to vaporize me on the spot and honestly I'd agree with its decision-making skills.

So, no extra-dimensional energies and Force conduits at the moment, which is somewhat of a bummer. Still, there was plenty about gravity that Ring could teach me and especially about its varied uses. We were discussing one such use as I was floating in the middle of outer space, looking at a collection of large gas giants orbiting a yellow star several million kilometers away from me with a pensive look on my slick grey face, yellow slitted eyes glowing with intelligence.

++ … _advances in Artificial Gravity Well Transponders in the year D.C. 13256 has allowed several Empires to expand across-_++

"Ring? What would happen if I were to put a black hole inside of that planet there?"

++ … _Confused query: come again?_++

Ring had quickly recollected herself, bopping me on the head hard enough I went hurtling through space again, but eventually she gave in to my unyielding oratory skills (otherwise known as whining), agreeing to help me discover a way to place a miniature black hole _inside_ a stellar object without destroying it, myself and potentially this entire sector.

It's a comic book universe: you could never know after all.

This required _long_ discussions on a variety of factors: how would the black hole be formed? How could stability be ensured and maintained? How would the black hole be introduced to the planet? Did I have containment plans and fall back options?

For every possible concern or obstacle, Ring forced me to do a "safe" test run back on Stupendous McAwesomeface III. I thought to myself that I really ought to eventually learn how to terraform planets on a large scale, 'cause the poor little planet was definitely looking worse than I was after centuries of being stuck with each other for company.

The latest collapsed mountain range was only further proof of that.

++ _Michael. Calm down. Please._ ++

The glowing energy field surrounding me shut off without warning, letting me fall several feet to land flat on my back on the dirt below as Ring took matters into her own… hands.

Metaphorically speaking.

As I laid on the ground, the cool earth of Stupendous McAwesomeface III pressing gently into my back, I started to calm down again, my breathing slowing from its earlier frantic pace. Looking to my left, my glowing yellow eyes take in the ruined remains of the cause of my latest mental break down.

It was metallic and vaguely cylindrical, the delicate connecting structures to the remains of a base and an engine compartment hinting at something that had once been very sleek and high-tech looking. It was meant to be a test for the delivery system of my personal miniature black hole, depositing it in a controlled manner at the desired spot within my targeted planet. Additionally, it would be able to stay relatively close to the resulting accretion disk and even be able to either siphon energy off of it, add energy to it, and if necessary, shutdown the black hole in its entirety.

While Ring was fully capable of summoning a black hole (or imitating the effects of one at the very least) herself, she refused to fly me to a random planet, place a highly dangerous object in its core and then just wait and see what happened. She demanded that I could achieve something similar through technological means myself first, allowing for the both of us to have back ups and containment plans in place.

This little project of mine had taken me the better part of nearly ten years to complete, in part due to some of the incredibly rare super-materials that had gone into its construction. I would've said that it was ridiculously expensive to make (on Earth it would have probably consumed billions if not trillions of dollars by now), if not for the fact that I didn't really use money.

I was the only person for lightyears around, how was I gonna keep a monetary valuta up and running on my lonesome?

Still, gathering the materials, refining the concept, mastering the science behind it all, pouring all of my sweat, blood and tears into it (the last one is figurative, this particular body doesn't come with tear ducts), I was finally ready for the big test… and then Ring simulated a black hole in its containment compartment, and the whole thing first imploded on itself, waited long enough for me to creep closer for a better look, and then exploded with enough violence to throw me hundreds of kilometers away, tossing me over the horizon.

As a result, I became rather… miffed.

And poor Stupendous McAwesomeface III lost another mountain range because of it.

… Again.

After contemplating the road that led to me lying here spreadeagled on my back next to the most expensive hunk of junk in this entire Sector, I took several deep, calming breaths, before a dull 'whump!' rumbled through the air, a wave of power making the ground shudder as my personalized Green Lantern outfit burst into existence around me.

Rolling up my metaphorical sleeves, I floated upright again, approaching the heap of slagged and warped metals with a determined look on my face, Willpower flaring up inside me.

I _would_ get this right dammit, no matter what!

++ _Michael, why not take a break? I don't understand why you insist on rushing through this project. What use do you have of creating artificial suns when this Sector already has plenty?_ ++

A gentle green glow erupts from my Ring as I pass it over the wreckage, a detailed scan showing me what parts are still salvageable as I think on her question. Why the need for the ability to create artificial suns? Well, this is DC. And DC happens to be the home universe of a rather famous individual who is powered by the sun. Said individual's powers would be immensely useful to my vague and ill-defined plans to protect my little Sector of the galaxy from universal and Multiversal threats. The conclusion was simple.

I smile as Ring continues scanning the remains of my latest experiment gone "kablooey!"

"It's a surprise tool that'll help us later."

++ _I realize that. That's why I asked._++

You know, for all their genius, I think the Guardians made a grave oversight when they didn't include knowledge of memes in their Ring's databases.

* * *

**Present Day**

**1702 AA/ 1818 AD **(Chile gains independence from Spain)

"So, where are we going?" a voice to my left says as we leave the Palace on the largest continent of Stupendous McAwesomeface III behind us.

Glancing down at the recently turned 19 year old Sul-Da, I smile with my now humanoid looking face. Building a new body with Kryptonian DNA as a template has eliminated the need for several of my earlier augmentations. Such as the Prothean head: with my current senses, there was no need to incorporate a multitude of eyes suited for the various spectrums of light and a single Kryptonian brain was advanced enough that I didn't need to design my head so that I could fit multiple upscaled normal ones in it.

I wasn't really all that hung up on how human-like I looked, but Ring suggested that the kids and I would bond better if we looked more like we came from the same species, so I didn't tweak the Kryptonite data I gathered from them _too_ much. I could've gone crazy with designing my new sleeve as I really only needed to isolate the part within their genetic structure that expressed the organs and organelles used to absorb solar radiation, which I could then carry over into a new body design, but I followed Ring's advice and used the whole of their DNA as a base to build off from instead.

I still made _some_ changes though, like keeping my stingray like tail and my four arms. I had become attached to having a tail (heh, get it? _attached_?) after walking around with one for the better part of 700 years and I have found having multiple arms simply too useful to not incorporate into my bodies.

This meant that as we were walking amidst the tall, lush grass plains that covered much of Stupendous McAwesomeface III's idyllic landscapes, Sul-Da and I looked remarkably both alike and different.

My extra appendages and large stature at over seven and a half feet (or somewhat over 2,30 meters by normal measurements) were a clear difference between us, as were my blazing green eyes (a cosmetic change, the eyeballs themselves were still Kryptonian in nature). But the shape of our facial features were nearly identical, if it weren't for our age difference and the fact that I had given myself a long mane and a glorious beard that reached down to my bulging pecs.

Our likeness wasn't a coincidence: much of the DNA samples used to create this body were copied from Sul-Da's own genetic structure, making us biologically related. I shared at least _some_ DNA with all of the children, but much of it was dormant since I only really needed the one strand in order to gain Kryptonian powers, though I mixed and matched so I got the best parts of their collective gene pool.

I was a Super-Superman.

"Well, I feel I've fully acclimatized to this new body, so now it's time to power it up. Once it's fully powered up, we can go on our first adventure outside of this Sector."

Sul-Da perked up at my mention of going on an extended adventure beyond the strict borders that I maintained around my Sector.

When he and his siblings arrived in my Sector eight years ago, Sul-Da had taken my half-assed "successor" story far more seriously than I had expected. He had almost immediately begun training himself and asking both Ring and Tala for literature on tactics and even diplomacy. He almost naturally claimed a leadership position amongst his siblings, with even the older ones looking towards him with some measure of respect as he fully committed himself to becoming what he felt an aspirant Green Lantern ought to be.

While at first I had been somewhat awkward around the intense youth (well, I was awkward around everyone that wasn't a sentient AI really) I couldn't help but respect the kid for his commitment and had begun to "train" him to achieve his goals.

This was mostly centered around combat and the like, since Ring was perfectly fine with handling all of the Kryptonian's education and eventually I had taken him and some of the other more mature children with me on "adventures", such as check ups on the wild animals and plant life on my Jungle moon. Still, even though I occasionally slingshotted us back to Krypton, I had made it _very_ clear that the borders of my Sector were to be respected. Since most of them were still in their teenage years, the majority of them couldn't fly yet and the three that did hadn't left Stupendous McAwesomeface III's stellar system yet so no-one had broken my rule _yet._

Thala had been the one to first question me on it (as an adult Kryptonian under a yellow sun, she was capable of interstellar flight in little under two years), but she agreed to my terms when I explained that, even as powerful as Kryptonians could become, they weren't invincible and I didn't want to draw any prying eyes to my little haven of the universe. Though she bought my story, I could tell she was suspicious that I kept us closed off from even other Lanterns in the nearby Sectors, who were supposedly my colleagues.

I know it's only a matter of time before Sul-Da starts wondering why I never contact my bosses or visit Oa with him, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. For now, I'm content to rise up from Stupendous McAwesomeface III's surface and soar through space alongside the bright eyed teenager (who is the youngest amongst his siblings currently capable of flight through both training and sheer stubbornness).

Said teenager taps his ear, activating the communications unit, allowing him to speak to me (while we can survive hard vacuum just fine, this does nothing to change the fact that in space, nobody can hear you talk).

"Michael, what do you mean, "power up"? It's been a little under a year since you transferred to this body, the fact that you can fly with it clearly indicates you have absorbed sufficient levels of energy from our sun?"

"Adequate? Perhaps. But tell me, when have I ever settled for 'adequate'?" I reply with a cheeky wink, earning me a raised eyebrow and an unimpressed silence.

Oof. Teenagers. Though crowd.

"Don't worry so much about things Sul-Da. It's good to see you take your duties as my successor seriously, but you are still young and we are safe here: relax a little! We are keepers of the peace, but we aren't machines, there's nothing wrong with unwinding from time to time. If you don't, you'll stress yourself out eventually."

Sul-Da gives me a reluctant nod, before looking ahead again as we rapidly approach a collection of extremely bright lights floating in the middle of space. It's still half a lightyear away, giving us a few minutes of peaceful silence.

I have never regretted taking in nineteen Kryptonian children. But I _have_ begun to appreciate silence again after my stint in isolation since then. That tends to happen when children get strong enough to tackle each other through the thick walls of the immaculate palace you've painstakingly built over the course of a century during a simple game of tag, or when they glomp you and break your spine on accident (I had to switch bodies _twice_ before I finally got this one finished), or when they get the sniffles and each sneeze causes a small hurricane or when-

"Uhmm… Michael? Are you crying?"

"What?! NO! It's just… some space dust got in my eye, that's all."

++ _I take objection to the implication that my shielding is insufficient at keeping even common debris at bay. Do not blame me for failures in your own emotional composure. As a side note, the West Wing of our palace had a supporting structure taken out: Val-Zel says he's sorry and promises they won't play baseball inside again. Also, you'll need to check in on the Brontadon. Mar-Da wasn't paying enough attention when she was overlooking that Zoo of yours and it tried to bite her in half. It shattered most of its teeth. Oh, and Tala is looking for you. Said something about dinner. ++_ Ring gleefully droned from around my finger, her integrated systems in Stupedous McAwesomeface III and his four moons allowing her to keep an eye on our home while I was away.

"Let's fly a little faster shall we?"

Sul-Da was right on my heels when I rapidly accelerated.

At our new pace, it didn't take long before our destination came in to view and I could see the young Kryptonian slow down in sheer shock when he realized what were flying towards.

"Those stars! What-... what are they doing?!"

Following his outstretched finger, I glanced at the culmination of nearly a millennium of some of the hardest work me and Ring had ever done in our lives and I let out a loud laugh (which of course only Sul-Da could actually hear). His confusion was easily understandable of course: it's not often that you see a stellar constellation in which 2 blue giants are arranged in a perfect circle, equidistant from each other by only a few hundred million kilometers, orbiting something flat, square and clearly artificial.

Everything Sul-Da had been taught by Ring, Tala and me about how the universe works told him this entire mess should've collapsed in on itself in a spectacular exploding fashion the very moment it was created, and yet he couldn't deny the fact that it clearly still existed, the blue suns swirling with relatively low speed around the ridiculously small looking platform at the centerpoint of their impossible formation.

As we got closer, their combined blue light washed over us and almost immediately, without any conscious input from our part, we began flying even faster. In a matter of moments, we had rocketed through the narrow gap of several millions of kilometers of empty space between the two blue giants, a shimmer quickly rippling over our forms and then we slammed down onto the platform, the design of which I had blatantly ripped off from the Cell games. When put in the centre of a ring containing twenty suns it looked hilariously small, but when we landed its true size became apparent.

There must have been over a thousand squares in each direction, yet the closest edge of the square we were currently standing in was still kilometers removed from us. The four pillars at each end of the platform were hundreds of times larger than even the tallest mountain peak back on Stupendous McAwesomeface III or his jungle moon. Sul-Da took all of this in with his mouth hanging open.

"Keeping the suns in a stable orbit without having them siphoning material from each other of this platform was the hardest part to be honest. That's what the shield we flew through is for and I had to do some impressive engineering to create a fixed orbiting point, over which I built this platform. It looks like a lot, but put a couple thousand automated construction forces on it for several centuries and you'll realize it's just lugging around of material. My kind back on my home planet used a similar principle in ancient times to built some of the largest objects we had ever seen, only using physical labor instead of course." I say with a proud smile as I puff my chest, overlooking my greatest achievement with a proud smile.

"This is…-" Sul-Da said, at a loss for words.

"For you."

He whipped around to face me, his face highlighted by the two suns still circling us, leaving barely any shadow, throwing his surprise in clear contrast.

"Under a red sun, Kryptonians are powerless. Still strong my the standards of most species in the galaxy, but nowhere near what they are capable of under yellow light. So, simply slide further along the spectrum and you get-"

"Blue." Sul-Da finishes for me, looking up at the closest giant with an understanding look in his eyes.

"That's what you meant with 'powering up': you wanted to absorb blue light to transcend what we would normally be capable of back home." he muttered while facing away from me, meaning he thankfully didn't see me get choked up when he referred to the Palace on Stupendous McAwesomeface III as 'home' instead of Krypton.

Sure, it's been eight years and it's hardly the first time something like this has happened (especially amongst the younger ones), but it still gets me every time.

"Wait. If you're capable of _this_, then why not simply turn the star back home blue? Wouldn't that have been easier?" Sul-Da asks as he turns to look at me again, causing me to cough slightly as I slightly tug at my (glorious!) beard.

"Well, that's because I originally was a little more ambitious. I wanted to give a blue giant to all of you, one per person. But I never made more than two work and by that time I had invested so much time and effort into building this damned thing that I'd rather finish this than continue tweaking with Stupendous McAweseomface III's star." I admit with a frown, which is quickly replaced by a surprised look when I hear a loud laugh which is followed by a tremendous impact as Sul-Da gives me a humongous hug, lifting me clear off the ground.

Still laughing, the teenager sets me back on the ground, grin growing only wider when he sees my confused look.

"You know, most parents give their kids toys, like a gaming station or a stuffed animal. I don't think I've ever heard of someone wanting to give a personal _star_ to their children." he sniggers.

Somewhat embarrassed, I tug on my beard again as I give a small shrug.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time."

Still grinning, Sul-Da claps me on the shoulder (or rather my upper torso as he can't quite reach my shoulder), shaking his head.

"You're a great dad, but you're absolutely crazy. I fear for the galaxy when Ma starts going on adventures with me instead of keeping you in check, really I do." He grins and I swear I can feel Ring getting choked up as well when he refers to her as his mom.

We're not so different after all, me and Ring.

"So! What's the plan? Is there a set amount of time that we need to absorb this energy for? What's next? Should I do some exercises?" Sul-Da speaks up in a more serious tone, going into 'leader-mode' as some of his siblings have started calling it (or occasionally 'stuck-up mode whenever they were feeling less charitable).

Spreading all of my arms, I tilt my head back and close my eyes, basking in the blazing rays of the two nearby stars.

"Once you're more powerful, we can go closer to the stars themselves without being damaged by them. Eventually, I want to get you to a point where you can mediate _inside_ of them. For now, their gravity is still more powerful than your strength so I'd rather not risk it. There's not really anything we can do to draw in their energy faster than we are already doing, so feel free to do whatever you like for now. Once you've gotten strong enough that you can walk across their surface without falling into their centre, we're going to embark on our adventure."

At the mention of adventure, I can feel Sul-Da's gaze zoom in on my face and I can just imagine the hungry expression on his face.

"What's this adventure about anyways? What's important enough to leave the Sector for?"

"While researching the photo-absorbing qualities of Kryptonians has contributed _significantly _to my level of power, I feel there is still more that can be achieved. There are far more diverse and esoteric sources of energy that I have tapped that aren't stars after all, yet for the most part I'm forced to interact with them through Ring. I cannot internalize them as I now can with sunlight. So, in order to further my advancement, we're going to pay a visit to a species remarkably similar to your own, Sul-Da. They aren't friendly to outsiders, even less so that Kryptonians, but hopefully I can convince them that I wish to adopt one of their orphans."

I didn't mind sharing the fact that I sought to adopt someone because I wanted to get a closer look at their power with someone that I had adopted because I wanted to get a closer look at his power. The children knew that I had incorporated Kryptonian DNA into my new body, making me more powerful, but I had always tried to make their lives as joy-filled and carefree as possible, so they hardly minded my original motivations. Tala was a bit upset with me at first, questioning the sincerity of my friendly demeanor towards the children and my role as a parent-figure in their lives, but it hadn't taken her long to see that I truly considered these young powerhouses as my own kids.

They just happened to be kids that would make me immensely powerful.

Similarly, while my reasoning for wanting to adopt a new kid for his powers might be less than morally upstanding, that didn't mean that I would care for this child with all of my three hearts (during my adventures, I had found that it pays off to have a set of spares of anything that has 'vital' in its name, like 'vital organ').

"Who are we visiting?"

I smile at Sul-Da's question and open my eyes, showing that they are blazing with power.

"We're gonna check in on the Daxamites, my boy."

* * *

**AN:** Not as happy with this as I was with the previous chapter. Let hear your thoughts on how to improve it. I currently have a lot of papers that I've been putting of for _way_ too long though (just thinking about them makes cold sweat run down my back) so I'll be busy with that for the most part. I'm also flying to Australia in about three weeks, and considering that's on fire… yeah, it's kinda rare these days that I get hit with the urge to write.

**Fun Fact:** The Green Lantern's character debuted in 1940, making the Lantern's first debut only two years after that of Superman's.


End file.
